Samurais on a mission

Short but quick, Japan is ready for Saturday's curtain-raiser at Carlton. Greg Baum reports.

The Japanese national Australian football team aroused such curiosity when it played at the Murray River hamlet of Howlong last Sunday that the host club sold 590 cans of beer - a local record.

The Samurais, as they are called, were a little bloodied and well beaten, but made a line at match's end and bowed to the crowd.

They also honoured tradition by insisting that their best player down a can, to shouts of "ikki, ikki" - "scull, scull" - but baulked at singing their theme song, which is St Kilda's with the word "samurais" substituted for "saints", and is sung in Japanese.

Nonetheless, the Samurais went down as well with the locals as the cans, said de facto team manager Richard Laidler, a one-time district cricketer and VFA footballer and brother of broadcaster, Terry.

But later it emerged that their best player, Yusuke Hoshi, had broken his leg. This will not only leave the Samurais weakened when they play New Zealand in the curtain-raiser to the Carlton-St Kilda game at Optus Oval on Saturday, but - as Hoshi was one of few in the party with an international licence - left them without their regular bus driver.

Yesterday afternoon, Laidler was making patchwork arrangements to get the team from their backpackers' digs at the Pint on Punt in Prahran to Elgar Park for a practice match against amateur club Box Hill North, their sister club in Melbourne.

Moreover, team coach Troy Beard's grandfather died while the team was in Howlong and he has gone home to Wangaratta for a few days. But the Samurais are undaunted, for these are mere molehills compared with the mountains they have already climbed.

Beard is a one-time St Kilda under-19 player who rejoiced to be back in Melbourne last Friday to see Nathan Burke's last game. He has taught English in Japan for the past 11 years and become a pioneer of Australian football there. At first there were two teams, but last year there were four and next year there will be six. Ex-pats necessarily are prominent, but Laidler said that the Samurais, which by statute must consist of indigenous university students, are the power team. "They're fit and fast," he said.

Matches are played when they can be arranged, on rugby pitches and bumpy baseball diamonds, all near to Tokyo because travel costs are prohibitive. There is, of course, no supporting culture, although occasionally a videotape arrives and the AFL and St Kilda have begun to help out with guernseys. Laidler said propagation in Japan was by word-of-mouth only, and the mystery of the game remained unfathomable.

"How do you explain that when someone kicks it to you, six or seven others are going to jump on you, that you then have to run with it and that you can't throw it; you have to kick it or hit it?" he asked.

Laidler is himself an unusual export. He played cricket for Carlton and football for Coburg, and was coaching cricket in Darwin until 18 months ago when he was lured to Japan to teach cricket and, as it happened, to coach the country's only netball team.

Laidler said Japan's sporting culture was narrow and exclusive, and he thought Australian sports appealed as rare alternatives. Taishi Tsukangoshi used to play rugby, but had been aware of Australian football since a holiday in Rockhampton when he was 10.

He said he played it "to do something different". His friends in Japan say to him: "It's dangerous; why do you play it?" He said it was because he loved the game.

Tsukangoshi has been in Melbourne for five months on a scholarship partly funded by the AFL, playing for Box Hill North and learning about coaching and umpiring as well as studying English at Monash University. He barracks for Carlton, but his favourite player is Jason McCartney. "I was moved by his comeback game," he said in his halting English.

The Samurais have only just begun. Laidler said their standard was roughly that of a suburban reserves team. In an international tournament in Melbourne last year, they did not win a game.

"They can run; they're very fast. They mark OK," said Laidler. "Their kicking's terrible, their handball's terrible. They're still getting used to the hard knocks. But they give 140 per cent."

The Samurais are short - their ruckman stands barely 180 centimetres - and light, and the Kiwis with their rugby heritage will make intimidating opposition. Laidler said their match plan would simply be to kick it low, square and quickly, and aim to run the legs off the New Zealanders.

The result will not matter, for the Samurais are on a pilgrimage, not a campaign. All have paid their own way. The party includes eight women, who are required by their university to involve themselves in a club.

Laidler said all in the squad had been awe-struck to be at Telstra Dome last Saturday to feel the emotion of Burke's farewell match. This afternoon, the Samurais will train with the Saints. Tsukangoshi can hardly wait, and nor can the future.